Pushing the Envelope -Skydiving

Every once in a while I push myself to do something I’ve just been too chicken to try. A while ago I decided to skydive. I had gotten a pilot’s license (small single-engine planes) while I was living in Kenya. But I when skydiving came up, I would assert that I saw “no reason to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.”

Truth is I have a terror of falling and was sure I wouldn’t even make it out of the plane, much less survive the actual skydive (I’m not the most graceful or athletic). But one day a friend was talking about her skydiving experience and I found myself wondering if I dared.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I called a small skydiving company in South Miami and booked myself a dive (tandem, of course).

I decided to make the trip down alone just in case I chickened out or made a total ass of myself. It was a perfect morning — bright blue sky, not too hot, not too cold.

As I crawled in the small, rickety, old plane that was piloted by a young man who I doubted was out of high school, I figured I had a better chance of dying from the plane falling apart than from the dive.

When I got over the shock of flying with an open side door (I was sitting right next to it), the hard part turned out to be getting my legs to swing out in preparation for the drop. My head kept saying move, the legs were adamant that they wanted to stay right where they were. But eventually we were all set.

Then my instructor and I were out the door free falling. What a sensation.

After a minute or so the chute opened. And we drifted peacefully over open countryside. There was no sound, no distraction, no fear. Just gentle rocking.

I had worried about the landing. But my instructor guided us in so carefully I barely felt my butt meet the ground.

Categories

Meta

I'm a writer currently living in Miami with my two dogs, Charlie and Marlena.
I love to travel, am endlessly curious about new places and enjoy nothing more than sipping wine and sharing stories with friends -- new and old.